What's going on, guys? John Santos, and on my YouTube channel, we help entrepreneurs
start clothing brands from home to design marketing and e-commerce. And in this video,
I'm actually at Printful's facility in North Carolina.
We're going to be taking you guys through some behind-the-scenes as well as talking about how
to leverage print on demand to truly build your brand. I'm excited to jump into it. Let's go.
My background in e-commerce has always been about creating custom products from the ground up.
So starting at 19 years old, I launched my first e-commerce business.
Back then, it wasn't as easy as it is today. With time, technology caught up, so it allowed
people to start e-commerce businesses a lot simpler than in those ages of 2009.
And then over those years, we kept developing designing new
product lines. We got on ABC's Steve Harvey Show, where we created this basketball bag,
and we sold that through Amazon and our own e-commerce storefront.
And then I continued to share more content, and we recently launched a streetcrafter
website where we equip entrepreneurs that are starting businesses from home.
The one thing that really impressed me about Printful's facility is that
it's massive. I think it's a hundred thousand square feet.
But they've maximized every single square inch of that facility to put not just printers but
put embroidery machines, put dryers, put multiple receiving QC stations, DTG printers like Kornit.
Other big brands, a lot of times, need to have a controlled environment,
even though it's really nice outside and there's nice humidity out there,
I didn't see one bay door open. They controlled their environment to make sure that every
printer is working right. Everything's so properly organized. They've been able to
identify like what is the best workflow and how can we get products right the first time.
Those little cutouts of like where you put the broom back, like where this is laid out,
super intentional about what they do, and they drive that through to the employees.
If somebody's done at a station, they're not just waiting for the next product to
come to them. They actually go out of their way and pick out that next order.
And they do it because Printful also rewards employees on, you know,
how much product they're getting out and are they meeting those standards.
The people working in the office or the people working on the floor are
both driving themselves to produce the best product for the company.
They're incredibly helpful, incredibly lovely, great people to work with.
This facility definitely brings a culture of togetherness, even though they're so global.
One of the major differences between producing in-house and producing with
a print-on-demand partner, you're buying time with Printful, you're not just buying a product.
You're truly buying the time that it takes for them to make the product,
for them to ship it, make sure it comes out right, to actually deliver to your customer on time.
They take out all the logistical issues and worries that you're going to have.
One of my friends has this huge fitness brand, and then one day he just stocked up on water
bottles, and he literally bought like ten thousand. It was like a dollar a piece.
He didn't know that people didn't want to buy the water bottles.
It was like his market didn't want him, right?
So he literally put so much investment out there when he could have just done it print on demand,
shown that, okay, you know what, maybe we can sell water bottles or maybe we can't,
but at least you try new product lines.
You also take out all the employee liability of having to hire new staff
and having to train and having to have new processes to run a
department that you may not see a return on investment immediately.
You have to pay extra care of attention when it comes to fulfilling your products in-house.
If you're an artist and you really like that,
then definitely, definitely consider doing it in-house and having control over that.
But the reality is that most entrepreneurs don't have time to do that.
They have full-time jobs, they might have kids, they might have all kinds of life obligations.
So a company like Printful allows them to essentially take the creativity with the
minimal time that they have and then go out there and put it on products
and start selling it. So if you're a media company or if you're a brand or
an influencer working with a print provider allows you to just focus on spreading that
message and getting to new customers and letting them do all the heavy lifting.
In my opinion, what makes Printful different from
all other print-on-demand providers is the selection of product choices.
They literally have almost any product you can think of.
And that's what's really cool to see because a lot of other
companies just outsource to different partners.
So they're not even fulfilling their products, so you can't necessarily control what that
product is going to look like or how the customer is going to receive it.
Printful actually has standards across all other facilities,
and they have their own software, and I think that's been something I haven't seen.
So Printful definitely sets the bar when it comes to efficiency but also product selection.
Now the other features they have, such as the shipping labels being branded with your logo as
well as the customized landing page with tracking information, a printed label on the inside.
All of that truly helps your brand see like a
real brand and not something that's being farmed out to a third party.
Because a brand isn't just a logo or a design,
it's the feeling that your customers are going to get.
So as an entrepreneur or brand owner, you should think about how can print-on-demand help build
your brand, and that brand that can be told to different stories and different products.
So when it comes to brands that are either getting started or already in business,
I think one of the things that we always see is a fault.
They're starting and they're keeping their ideas a secret until it's time to launch.
So they're waiting too long to ask for the sale,
but they're also waiting too long to even build a community.
And I think they fail to build a community because they never think
about their niche audience that's going to be following and really wanting to buy.
You have to start by identifying who your audience is for your clothing brand,
and then you should create content around that niche audience interest.
Really talk to your audience,
join communities that are associated with that audience, and be interactive.
The last thing people want is for you to just promote,
promote, promote without giving them something to talk about or to buy into.
Existing brands that might have a little bit of a hard time selling,
they fall into the same mistake.
They maybe started with a niche audience in mind, and then that brand owner grew out of
that niche because it's not something that they're related to anymore.
Maybe they started something with skate, but now they're 40 years old and
skate at all, so that message doesn't resonate, those designs don't resonate.
So for those brands, I definitely consider them revisiting who their target audience
is and maybe where their audience has now grown and start speaking to those languages.
Or if you're still interested in that skate,
being embedded more into that niche again, talking that language, getting real-time
design feedback versus just dropping a product and hoping somebody's gonna buy.
Use tools such as Printful's mock-up view that gets super detailed shots,
and it allows you to start conversations around what you're designing.
So that's really what selling is all about,
it's about getting people talking because that creates interest.
From interest, they're going to be asking questions.
Make sure you answer those questions with content
or in the DMS and then close the sale when the product's available.
And if none of that is working, then you should really go back to the drawing board and ask,
are your designs good enough? Is it something that people want to buy?
Use print on demand to test those designs, don't invest money into it.
Go out there, get real-time feedback, make a product, sell it with print on demand,
and then think about investing into the development of those designs.
So there you have it, guys! I hope you enjoyed this video and are able to take
away some nuggets to help you build your brand.
If you have any questions for myself,
make sure you check out that description to find the link to our YouTube channel.
And more importantly, make sure you show some love to Printful
and subscribe for additional videos to build your brand with print-on-demand.